Tuesday, April 15, 2008

A slab of Vic

For all the travails that Victorians are going through right now, they can at least take solace that their state was not founded a little earlier or a little later or they could have ended up being resident in the state of Edward.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Thursday, April 10, 2008

I've reached my Quoter

"Did you know that 54% of all Americans believe that the world was created 6000 years ago? That's 1000 years after the Sumerians invented glue."

Donald Sutherland

My quote of the year.

The funny thing being that I was just musing on that very thing (well, not the Sumerian glue bit) earlier in the day. The most 'remarkable' thing about the Bible is that it has no account of things unknown to the people who wrote it: no microbes, no dinosaurs, no life on Mars, no theoretical possibility of time travel. It doesn't differ greatly from other prevailing myths other than in the beauty of its language. If Shakespeare had started a religion instead of L Ron Hubbard, would it have achieved this level of success? Readers bedazzled by the beauty and genius of the language. This Elizabethan 'dianetics' would have, in addition to the flowery prose and the just-so epithets, all the drama and intrigue; all the bloodthirsty darkness of the much-loved scripture.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

that's dedication for you

It may seem incongruous for someone who is deeply suspicious of self-aggrandising powerbrokers, but I have held a long fascination in the pursuit of prosperity. I actually differentiate those who have made it through entrepeneurial acumen and those who have got there by cheating.

Which hopefully serves as some kind of preamble as to how it is that I found myself spending three days straight at a Breakthrough to Success seminar. Normally this kind of rah-rah bravura would be nauseating but, given that the goal was improvement for every individual in the room, on their own terms, it became bearable. And I really got something from it. I'm just not clear on what exactly.

The presenter was Christopher Howard, an alternative Tony Robbins if you like, and he brought the more cautious intelligentsia into his sway by demonstrating a profound knowledge of the areas of hypnosis and neuro-linguistic programming he was working. Not to mention that, if you're a public speaker, you could not help to be damn impressed at how he could hold the stage for hours on end. I'm good for probably two hours and then it helps to have notes.

Of course if you wanted to be cynical, you could say that he offers free tickets to this event in order to get you to go to further events that cost thousands of dollars. But I didn't say that.

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